


Today, In a Manner of Speaking

by Snickfic



Category: Captain America (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Mpreg, Not Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Mid-Credits Scene Compliant, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Time Loop, Wakanda (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-04 04:50:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20465300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: “I’m pregnant,” Loki announced the next morning, when Bucky came out of his hut. “It’s yours, more or less. I don’t know how it happened. I already told you all this, because I’ve lived the same day one hundred and twenty-one times. Or perhaps one hundred and twenty-four; I’ve lost count. I don’t know why I’m telling you again. You can’t help, and you’ll have forgotten the next time I see you anyway.”





	Today, In a Manner of Speaking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionessvalenti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/gifts).

On the sixty-third day, Loki realized he was pregnant. Upon discovering this, he elected to spend the day in his room. It wasn’t the first day or the fifth that he’d spent that way, but it was the first time that he’d done so for reasons other than simply not being able to bear the same conversation yet again. When Bucky’s knock came that afternoon—it always did, if Loki hid himself long enough—Loki threw a confusion spell up and a silencing spell after it.

He stayed in his room in the palace, with the view on Birnin Zana and the bird that landed in precisely the same place on the balcony railing every morning, and he applied every kind of magic he knew to prove it wasn’t true. It was, though. Buried in his gut, with a heart that swished and blood that answered to all his spells, there was the beginning of a baby.

Defeated, Loki slumped on the bed. “Hel.”

He stirred himself eventually. He kicked some things. He threw a great clay pot through the glass window and all his bedclothes after it and then several art pieces. He stood uselessly fuming in the center of the room, half-wishing to destroy the palace again, but he’d barely escaped injury the last time he’d done it, and anyway it was fundamentally dissatisfying to destroy a thing and wake up the next day to find it whole again.

He did not think, as he stepped sideways into space. He carefully avoided thinking on the infinitesimal journey from the palace to Bucky's clearing and the marginally longer journey by foot down the slope to Bucky’s pond. 

Bucky was standing in the shallow end of the pond, his hip bones angling sharply into the water. He broke into a grin when he saw Loki. “I stopped by your place earlier,” Bucky said, heading for shore. Water trickled down his naked body, and his hair was tied back, shining wet in the sun. Sometimes he looked at Loki as though he liked him, which was a peculiar enough trait to be intriguing even in a mortal.

But he was still only a mortal. A plaything, useless in any matter of real import. He hadn’t even a single scrap of magic.

“Hey, you all right?” Bucky said, peering close.

“Quite,” Loki said. He pulled Bucky flush against him—still quite wet and deeply, solidly ordinary. Loki kissed him, and Bucky’s fingers tangled in his hair, and all else in Loki’s mind was crowded out.

* * *

On the sixty-fourth day, Loki immediately repeated the previous day’s tests. Perhaps this _one_ time the magic imprisoning him would work in his favor, but no. If he suffered a bruise one day, he was still sore the next; if he was pregnant yesterday, he was still pregnant today, it seemed.

It took a great deal of effort to get drunk on Wakandan liquor. Loki was not deterred.

* * *

On days sixty-five through one hundred and nineteen, Loki ignored this new knowledge. He pretended the headaches and occasional nausea were from stress, which he had plenty of, seeing as he’d lived the same day one hundred and nineteen times now. (Or possibly one hundred and twenty-three; he’d been sober less often than he’d been drunk, that next couple of weeks, and his accounting was always uncertain thereafter.)

He explained his plight to the Princess Shuri thirty-eight times. The explanation grew longer with each telling, because he had to also tell her what they’d already tried. Eventually it occurred to him to write the list on himself—the only thing in the universe still able to tell one day from the next.

He slept with Bucky twenty-three times. “Hey, what’s going on with you?” Bucky asked, sweeping the hair from Loki’s face. Loki was due to cut it again; people noticed the change if he went too long. He’d begun to tie it back most of the time to save himself the trouble.

“You’ve asked me that fifty-four times today,” Loki said, too weary for hysterics. At the look on Bucky’s face—the _Oh shit, Loki’s gone mad, who do I call_ look—Loki shook his head and said, “Never mind.” He kissed Bucky’s ear, slid his hand inside Bucky’s thigh. Bucky was, as always, easily distractible.

* * *

On day one hundred and twenty (or one hundred and twenty-four), Loki considered the facts. He woke up every morning in the same bed, no matter where he’d lain down; he carried with him any scars, injuries, illness, hair growth the day before had earned him; and, because he’d done nothing about it, he was still pregnant. He worked a spell to be sure, and soon enough he felt the rabbit-quick pulse of a foreign heartbeat. 

The heartbeat was stronger than when he’d first checked. His trousers had fit strangely for a month while he chose not to notice. It wasn’t that he had put on much weight (yet), only that the weight he already had had begun redistributing itself in inconvenient ways.

He went to the Princess Shuri (again). “I’m living the same day over and over again,” he said. “Yes, like on Groundhog Day.” He had only a dim idea of the holiday’s cultural significance, but this conversation always went quicker when he mentioned it. 

Usually at this point, he’d recite their ever-longer list of failures. Today he said, “And I’m pregnant.”

Shuri paused. “Is that common for Asgardian men?”

“No.” Or Jotun men, either, as far as he knew.

She cocked her head, not dissimilar to the bird that always perched on the balcony railing. “Are these two things related?”

“I—don’t know,” Loki said, startled. He’d spent so long ignoring the one problem in favor of the other that he hadn’t considered them together. Norns, he was no better than _Thor_. “I noticed the repeating time first.”

“Hmm,” Shuri said. “Well, examining the space-time continuum sounds messy, so let’s start by examining you.”

The examination involved taking off his shirts, opening his trousers, and lying on a table while Shuri waved a thick, black wand over him. It had blue lights down its length, and sometimes it beeped. “All right,” Shuri said eventually. “You can sit up now.” She went to her computer terminal and began muttering to herself.

Sitting up, half-naked, Loki let himself see what he hadn’t before: he’d grown a bit of a belly. Soft, not very defined, but no longer deniable. Hurriedly he put his undershirt on and buttoned his trousers, which resisted more than they’d used to. He’d have to make alternate arrangements soon—someone’s robe he could steal each morning upon waking, if nothing else.

Shuri wandered back with a tablet. She pressed a button, and a hologram hovered above it: clearly a fetus. “A girl, I think,” Shuri said, rotating the figure so that Loki could see. “I don’t know how old exactly—this is not my area of expertise. Maybe four months? I can check.”

“I see,” Loki said. He felt—blank. Without thought or opinion, utterly lacking in plans, just as he had every time he’d allowed even a moment’s consideration of this particular—fact. This reality.

“Did you just realize today?” Shuri asked.

“In a manner of speaking.”

Shuri squinted suspiciously at this, and finally she rolled her eyes. “How long have you known?”

“Fifty-seven days.”

Shuri digested this. Then, to Loki’s surprise, she hopped up next to him on the examination table. They sat for a while in what grew into a companionable silence. Finally, Shuri said, “Whose is it? And don’t tell me _yours_.”

“You only ask because you want to know who I’ve been sleeping with,” Loki said. “You have a prurient mind for one so young.”

“Yes, and?” Shuri grinned broadly at him.

Lok turned away to stare across the lab. The shelving really was quite ingenious. But Shuri elbowed him, and at last he said, “Bucky. Your White Wolf. Assuming sexual relations have anything to do with it.”

Shuri hummed thoughtfully. “And what does Bucky think about it?” When Loki didn’t immediately answer, she said, “You haven’t told him.”

“It hardly seemed worthwhile.”

Shuri refrained from commenting on that; she only patted his arm—patronizingly, he supposed, but he had difficulty working up any ire over it. It seemed like too much work. “Well, I have to examine these scans, and you can tell me more about this time loop—”

“I’ve told you everything,” Loki said. “Seventy-four times.”

“Why don’t you go see Bucky,” Shuri said, giving his arm another squeeze. “Come back tonight. Maybe I will have some theories about your pregnancy by then.” 

And thus he was dismissed.

He wandered about the palace for a while, leaving portals for people to stumble through. His heart wasn’t in it. He called the space station and left a message for Thor, who wasn’t even on the station; he was eighteen hours away, scavenging parts and out of everyone’s reach. He ate the same mango salad and goat on rice he’d eaten forty-three other times. And finally, aimlessly, he found himself stepping sideways into space and out again in the clearing by Bucky’s hut.

“Hey,” Bucky said, as he always did, warm and pleased and surprised. He was always surprised when Loki made these morning visits, no matter how many times Loki made them. “Hey, are you—”

“Never mind,” Loki said, turning to go. “It doesn’t matter.”

Bucky caught his arm. Loki could have thrown him off easily. Instead he only stood there, refusing to meet Bucky’s eye. He was shaking, he found. This was novel, at least. This had never happened to him before. He ought to be more appreciative.

He found himself guided inside the hut while Bucky murmured something about sunstroke. “No,” Loki said. “I’ve just had a very trying day.”

“Tell me about it?” Bucky said, sitting Loki down on the mat. His blue eyes were very earnest. Uselessly, hopelessly earnest. Like Thor—an unwelcome comparison, under the circumstances.

“You can’t help. I shouldn’t have come.” Loki couldn’t remember anymore why he had. He’d have left except that Bucky’s hand on his arm felt like the only thing grounding him to the floor. 

“I could listen,” Bucky said.

“I—” Loki’s voice cracked. He tried again. “I’ve lived the same day one hundred and twenty times. Approximately. Like Groundhog Day.”

Bucky shook his head. “I don’t know what that is.”

Perhaps a Wakandan festival, then.

“The same day? The _exact_ same day?”

“With some variation,” Loki said.

He told Bucky all the things he’d tried, with and without Shuri: the spells, the nuclear collider she’d drawn up the plans for, the quantum manipulator she’d wanted to make another time. And all the things he’d done that hadn’t helped at all: the drinking, the destruction of Mount Bashenga. “You needn’t worry, it’s fine now,” Loki said, at the look on Bucky’s face. “As if it never happened,” he added bitterly.

At last, for no reason he could discern except the sympathy in Bucky’s eyes and the warmth of his hand on Loki’s shoulder, Loki said, “And I’m pregnant.”

There was a long, long pause. Bucky looked hard at Loki. Slowly he asked, “Is it my kid?”

Loki scoffed. “I’m not sure it’s anyone’s, in the traditional sense. I don’t even know if it’s _mine_, properly speaking.” But as soon as he said it, he knew it was a lie; the child was his in every sense that mattered, as surely and intimately as his magic was his, or his skin. 

_Oh_, he thought distantly. _Well._

When he surfaced from this revelation, he found Bucky still watching him, waiting quietly. Bucky’s capacity for patience was unsettling at times. Loki dragged his scattered thoughts together and said, “Assuming it was conceived in anything like the normal fashion, then yes. If it’s anyone’s, it’s yours.”

“How about that,” Bucky said.

“Indeed.”

“So, are you—pretty far along?” Bucky glanced dubiously at Loki’s middle, where he still looked quite ordinary, thank you, at least with all his clothes on. “How did you figure it out? How long have you known?” Before Loki could answer, Bucky laughed. “I guess I’ve asked you this shit lots of times, huh.”

“No,” Loki said softly. “No, I’ve never told you before.”

“Oh,” Bucky said, and Loki knew he’d spoken wrongly. Honesty was always a mistake. Loki didn’t know how he could have forgotten.

He leaned into Bucky’s shoulder—a weakness, but what had Loki to lose? Bucky wouldn’t remember it. Perhaps even Loki wouldn’t, if this went on long enough. “Please, can you ask your questions tomorrow.”

Bucky hesitated, but eventually he stretched his arm around Loki and pulled him in close. Bucky was very solid. “Yeah. I can do that.”

Loki didn’t go back to the palace that day. He followed Bucky around the hillsides, eating with goatherds and swimming. (Loki sat on the bank for that part, in the shade.) When night fell, they retreated to the darkened hut to kiss and rut against one another, Bucky seemingly as hungry for it as Loki. 

Afterwards, they drifted towards sleep, Bucky snug up behind Loki as he liked to do until they both got too hot. Not that overheating mattered now; by the time discomfort could have woken Loki up, he’d be back in his palace room anyway, starting the day afresh. Bucky’s flesh arm fell over Loki’s waist. When his fingers brushed across Loki’s belly, they both stiffened. “Can I?” Bucky whispered.

“As you like,” Loki said. 

Bucky’s hand closed over that softness Loki had discovered earlier. His hand took a slow, exploratory sweep across Loki’s belly until finally it settled over the shallow swell. His breath was warm on Loki’s neck. “We’ll figure something out,” Bucky said. “Whatever this time thing is, we’ll get you out of it.”

Here in the dark, Loki could say, “I very much doubt it.”

“You’ll see. You’ve got me, now,” Bucky said, with a smile in his voice.

Loki scoffed. “And tomorrow?”

Bucky fell quiet, giving Loki a meager, desolate sort of triumph. He thumbed over Loki’s navel just firmly enough not to tickle. At last he took a deep breath and said, “If you tell me tomorrow, then you’ll have me tomorrow, too.”

Loki didn’t ask what good Bucky possibly thought he could be. He laced his fingers through Bucky’s, and he didn’t say anything at all.

* * *

“I’m pregnant,” Loki announced the next morning, when Bucky came out of his hut. “It’s yours, more or less. I don’t know how it happened. I already told you all this, because I’ve lived the same day one hundred and twenty-one times. Or perhaps one hundred and twenty-four; I’ve lost count. I don’t know why I’m telling you again. You can’t help, and you’ll have forgotten the next time I see you anyway.”

Bucky leaned into his door frame and stared at Loki awhile. Loki scowled back. He wanted very much to slip through a crack in space, perhaps never to come out again. One couldn’t precisely live in those secret passages in space, because time didn’t pass there, but at this point that seemed like a point in favor.

“Okay,” Bucky said at last.

“Okay?” Loki repeated. “That’s all you have to say? _Okay_?”

Bucky shrugged. “There’s a lot of weird shit in the world.”

“You’re taking this very well.”

“I don’t have to live with it. How are you holding up?”

Loki gave in to impulse and turned to look out to the edge of the clearing, where earth, beaten down by goats, faded into jungle. He crossed his arms. “Poorly.”

Bucky came up behind him, draped an arm over Loki’s shoulders, and tugged him close. Loki let him. He could admit to himself that there was something comforting about Bucky’s equanimity, which seemed rooted as deep as Yggdrasil herself. “A kid, huh?” Bucky said. “You’re keeping it?”

“So it would seem.” Loki heaved a sigh. “At this rate it’ll be born today.” 

It took Bucky a moment to follow. “Would the kid live the same day, too, then?”

“I—don’t know.” Perhaps even this unasked-for child would leave him alone in the end. It would surely be the better for it. That desolate feeling returned, emptier than ever.

“Have you talked to Shuri?”

“Many, many times.”

“Today?”

Sometimes, the equanimity was a bit wearying. “Not this particular morning, no.”

“So let’s go see her. We can take the shortcut,” he added hopefully.

Prior to the time loop business, Bucky had spent weeks asking Loki about his travel along the world tree. “You don’t even believe in magic,” Loki pointed out yet again. He didn’t know how many times before that he’d said it; he’d never bothered to count. It was a novel thought. “You won’t remember it.”

“But I’ll remember it today,” Bucky said mildly.

Loki had never had any real reason not to take Bucky along except that Loki liked teasing him about it. Before all this had begun, he’d planned to introduce the idea of a bribe; he’d been very curious to see what depravity Bucky might be willing to engage in in bed when he had a clear objective in mind. 

It all seemed very long ago. Loki took Bucky’s hand—the flesh one, in case it mattered—and said, “Don’t let go.” Then he took a step and pulled Bucky along behind him, through one of the universe’s little cracks.

There was no heat, outside the world, nor any cold. There was no time, neither present nor past nor future; there was only eternity. The universe stretched out before them: blue-white stars and dusty nebulas hung from Yggdrasil like leaves, and bottomless black depths yawned between. Yggdrasil was a broad but uneven highway under their feet. Bucky’s awe emanated from him, though of course he couldn’t speak—there was no air here, nor any opportunity to express a linear thought when all moments were the same moment.

There could be no motion in this place, only existence. Loki gripped Bucky’s hand and impressed upon the universe that they existed not here on the world tree, but elsewhere. And it was so. The transition was seamless, even with a passenger, which said something for Bucky’s capacity for being precisely who and where he was.

And then they were free from that timeless stillness. They were in Mount Bashenga, on a wide, circular, gently sloping path: the thread of the ancient drill. If they followed it, they’d come soon enough to Shuri’s lab.

“Holy shit,” Bucky said.

Belatedly Loki remembered to drop Bucky’s hand. Loftily, he said, “Magic.”

“Holy shit,” Bucky repeated. “You do that all the time?”

“Often enough,” Loki said.

“And are you always blue?”

“Blue?” Loki said, alarmed. He spread the fingers of his hand. They were the usual pink-pale shade. 

“You were glowing all over.” Bucky gestured, perhaps in case Loki was in doubt as to what _all over_ meant. “Is that a pregnancy glow? I hear women get that sometimes.”

“I don’t think—” Loki stopped. He kept on staring at his hand, which looked exactly the same as it had ever done, without even a hint of a glow or the faintest blueish tinge. Nor did it alter itself upon his inspection. He pressed it cautiously to his abdomen, and with a twist of his fingers—material and immaterial—he called the light of the universe to show him not what he thought he should see, but what was.

Slowly his belly began to glow an intense and very familiar blue. Loki dropped his hand. “Oh, _Hel_.”

“Everything okay?” Bucky asked. Loki had forgotten he was there. He must still have been shaken from his trip outside the world; he looked uneasy, uncertain. 

“Hel,” Loki repeated, uselessly. He turned and began the climb up the drill. Bucky fell in step with him and had the sense not to ask any questions—or perhaps he did ask them, and Loki didn’t hear. His attention was all inward, on the child and the glow he’d seen. He could still feel the radiating, intoxicating power of it that he’d become so familiar with that he’d allowed it to recede into the background, a constant, unremarkable murmur.

They made the final turn and approached Shuri’s lab. She grinned when she saw them—at Bucky, no doubt. Loki reached inside his jacket—far, far inside, into the pocket that held any number of things, regardless of size—and pulled out the Tesseract. He set it on the table with a vindictive clatter.

“What—?” Bucky said. 

Shuri looked at the Tesseract with huge round eyes. Before she could reach for it, Loki said, “I wouldn’t touch it with my bare hands, if I were you.”

“What _is_ it?” Shuri asked, captivated.

Loki gave the thing a good, hard glare. “The source of my problems,” he said.

* * *

Between the time loop, the pregnancy, the Tesseract, and the basic magical principles that bound them all together, it took some time to summarize the situation in a way that Shuri understood. “So this stone—” Shuri gave the Tesseract another look that was equal parts suspicion and awe. “—the stone made you pregnant.”

Bucky, who’d remained silent through all of this, was clearly listening carefully for Loki’s answer. _Is it my kid?_ he’d asked, so quietly. Loki cleared his throat. “It _allowed_ me to become pregnant, by drawing on its essence and twining it with the threads of time, which I’m now bound up in.” 

“But its essence is space, you said.” 

Loki shrugged. “The Tesseract is extremely poorly understood, even by Asgard. Perhaps my—perhaps Odin knew more, but that’s no help now. But even though I don’t understand the why of it, the what is clear enough.”

Bucky spoke up. “So the real question is, what now?”

“I’ll need to get free of the tangle somehow,” Loki said. “Cut the tie. I can think of some possible options, but I was hoping the princess could help.” 

Shuri rubbed her hands together with what could only be described as glee. “I can definitely do that.”

Translating magical principles into something that Shuri didn’t wrinkle her nose over was exhausting work. They worked until lunch, and then they worked through that, too, eating food a Wakandan youth brought in. 

Bucky was surely bored, but he didn’t say anything about leaving. It was a relief somehow, turning and seeing him there, mouth shut and eyes open, listening intently.

Abruptly, Loki found himself leaning unsteadily against Shuri’s workstation. The next moment he had Bucky at his side, gripping his elbow. “You okay?”

Loki held on and took stock of himself. “I’m hungry, I think,” he said vaguely. “What time is it?”

“Past dinner time,” Bucky said. 

“That’s absurd,” Loki said, but then he looked the clock on Shuri’s display, and it was. Time had passed so swiftly, and he hadn’t even noticed—a marked change from so many days that each seemed weeks long.

He found himself being walked firmly to a chair, which he dutifully sat in. Bucky disappeared; after a moment, Loki realized he was the recipient of one of Shuri’s significant looks. He closed his eyes and waited for the light-headedness to pass. Almost instantly, it seemed, Bucky returned with a basket. Loki caught a whiff of local spices and realized he was famished.

Bucky remained a near and silent presence all through the meal. Loki waited until Shuri was engrossed in a display on the other side of the lab, and then he turned to Bucky, eating the last of his flatbread and lentils on his feet, and said, “You’re going to hover, aren’t you.”

Bucky looked caught out, but he recovered quickly. “If you’ll let me.”

“Hmm,” was all Loki could find to say to that. 

And then it grew ever-nearer the midnight hour, and Loki remained as tangled in the threads of time as ever. “I think this is more than a one-day project,” Shuri said, sounding apologetic.

Loki found his lips curling in a smile, genuine, for the first time since he could remember. “However long it takes us, I think you will find it was only one day.”

* * *

In fact it took nearly two weeks of days, each the same, for Loki to come to the inevitable conclusion—the one he’d avoided looking at, there in the back of his mind. “As long as I’m carrying the child, the loop will repeat itself.” 

“But if we—” Shuri began.

“We tried that. We’ve tried everything. Every possible avenue, we have explored.” Many not on this particular day, but on other days like it, sometimes two or three times, in case some error in execution had gone unnoticed the first time. 

“So what are you going to do?” Bucky asked.

“Do?” For the first time in a while, Loki felt the burden of all those many stolen days. They weighed at him like a wet wool cloak, dragging him down. Suddenly he wished for nothing more than to lie down and sleep for a very long time.

Bucky peeled himself away from the muraled wall. “You’ve got two choices, right? Wait until it’s born, or—” He shrugged. “Or don’t.”

Loki stared at him. His thoughts felt clouded, as if the last few weeks of focus and strain had caught up with him all at once.

Bucky’s gaze held nothing but kindness. “You don’t have to have a kid, you know. If you don’t want to.”

“I’d like some fresh air, I think,” Loki said, and stepped out of the world.

Bucky found him an hour or so later at the top of one of Birnin Zana’s taller residential buildings. It had a rooftop garden and a thick, gleaming barrier all around the edge. Loki sat on this barrier with his feet dangling, watching the sun gild the city as it set.

Bucky sat silently next to him, a couple of feet away—a decent, respectable distance. Bucky dropped his clasped hands between his thighs. He said nothing. He could always be counted on for silence, a quality Loki had come to appreciate. “Do you want children?” Loki said at last.

“I didn’t give it a lot of thought. I always had other shit going on.” Bucky shrugged, as if to convey the torture and brainwashing that had occupied him for an entire mortal lifespan. “But now it seems like—maybe, yeah. Maybe I would. But there’s other ways to get kids, you know. Even in Wakanda, sometimes there’s a kid that needs a family.”

“I’m somewhat attached to this one now, I’m afraid.” 

Bucky’s gaze on Loki was like a weight. After a while, he said, “You’ve got, what, four and a half months to go? Can you handle that?”

One hundred and forty days. There were as many before Loki as behind him; they stretched out to the horizon and beyond. Loki closed his hand over his belly. The child had been kicking weakly a little while ago. “I’ll have to, I suppose.”

Bucky inched closer. He put his arm around Loki’s shoulders, and Loki relaxed against him. “It’s easier when you’re here,” Loki said. Bucky stilled. Loki had said too much; he’d surprised him. He hadn’t meant to say it, but words seemed to escape him more easily these days, when there was no fear of them haunting him later.

Before Loki could pull away, Bucky tugged him closer. “I’m glad,” Bucky said softly. He kissed Loki’s hair. 

Loki twisted to catch Bucky’s mouth with his. The kiss was sweet, soft with the things that even now Loki couldn’t put words to. He cupped Bucky’s jaw and kissed him as tenderly as he knew how. And then it was not sweet at all, for Loki was hungry for Bucky, famished. 

“Eager,” Bucky murmured, smiling against Loki’s mouth.

“I haven’t had your cock in seventeen days,” Loki said.

Bucky groaned and caught Loki’s lips again. The next time he was free, he said, “How do you feel about beds? I don’t really want to fuck you on this rooftop.”

“Coward,” Loki said, but he swung his feet over the barrier, caught Bucky’s hand, and pulled him sideways to his room in the palace. 

Inside, they continued what they’d begun: hungry, open-mouth kisses, wandering hands. None of it was enough for Loki. He tugged at the ties of Bucky’s shirt, unwrapped him, pressed him to a wall to kiss him again. It was only as Bucky began to return the favor, hands falling to Loki’s tunic, that Loki realized what must surely happen next. Loki caught Bucky’s hands, holding them still. “Perhaps I’d better,” Loki said, and stepped away.

He turned away and didn’t let himself think about why. He stripped piece by piece until only his draw-string trousers remained—his solution to the ongoing clothing problem. Then he turned, hands hanging at his sides. He let Bucky look at him: at the abrupt and unmistakable change the last few weeks had made to his silhouette. 

Bucky approached cautiously and laid his hands not on Loki’s belly, but on his hips. He pressed a kiss to Loki’s lips that began tenderly and soon turned hot. “Am I fucking you or what?” he murmured against Loki’s mouth.

“If you would be so kind,” Loki said, and drew Bucky towards the bed.

Afterwards, Loki drifted back to himself to find Bucky propped up on one elbow, looking at him. At his belly, specifically, now undeniably round and ripening with unexpected fruit. Loki cleared his throat. “You may touch, if you like.”

Bucky huffed. “It’s going to take some getting used to, you know?”

“Yes, well. _You_ won’t be getting used to it.” 

“I guess it’s not so weird for you, right?” Bucky said, gaze still fixed well below Loki’s eyes. 

“Well, I’ve known longer—”

“No, I mean, you had that horse thing.”

It took Loki a solid twenty seconds to realize what Bucky must be referring to. “_Horse thing_,” he said, outraged. He shoved up onto his elbows. “By the nine—!” 

Bucky was sniggering quietly to himself, which probably meant he didn’t actually think Loki had fucked and borne the get of a horse. Before Loki could muster any further response, Bucky reached over and starfished his hand across Loki’s belly.

All the breath went out of Loki. Stillness fell over them. All Loki could feel was the warmth of Bucky’s hand and the beat of his heart, thudding in his chest. Then, as if knowing she was the center of attention, his child kicked against Bucky’s palm. Bucky’s eyes went wide. At the next kick, he grinned—that open, easy grin that Loki had come to look for.

A hundred and forty days, with a child at the end, and Bucky, and a future. Loki thought he could do that.

* * *

On the two hundred and eighty-sixth day, Loki woke very early. He lay on his side, eyes closed, and lisened to the quiet hum of appliances from his little private kitchen. He was unsure why he’d woken until he felt a sudden tension in his abdomen, like the beginning of a cramp—not painful, but strange. It went away after a few moments. He took a few deep breaths. Perhaps fifteen minutes passed while he dozed, and then it returned again. This time he struggled upright, around the great bulk of his belly. Who knew a single infant could possibly require so much space?

He threw on a robe for decency’s sake and went to Bucky’s hut. Bucky squinted at him in bewilderment. He still looked mostly asleep. “Loki?” 

“Yes, I know what I look like. Yes, it’s yours. I’m on my way to Shuri’s lab for the birth, but will you—I would like you to be there.” Loki took Bucky’s hand in his own and said, “Will you come, please?”

Bucky looked at Loki’s hand, then his stomach, then his eyes. “I feel like I missed out on some things.”

“There’ll be time to catch you up. A great deal of time,” Loki said, suddenly astonished at his own words and full of wonder. “We’ll have all the time in the world.”

END


End file.
